Join the Wrens: and free a man for the Fleet

A Second World War recruitment poster for the Women's Royal Naval Service (WRNS) featuring a three-quarter length depiction of a woman dressed in the uniform of a WRN set against a blue sea and horizon. She gazes out of the poster and is saluting with her gloved right hand. Promoted as the most stylish of the women's services, the role of the WRNS was to undertake shore jobs that would release more men for service on ships.

The WRNS was formed in 1917 as the official women's branch of the Royal Navy. Members, known as Wrens, included cooks, telegraphists and clerks. Although conscription had been introduced in Britain in 1916, it did not apply to women working for the defence forces and so recruitment was reliant on volunteers. Although the WRNS was disbanded in 119, it was re-formed in 1939 at the beginning of the Second World War. By 1944 there were over 74,000 members undertaking duties more directly linked to naval operations.

The Wren in the poster is an example of the glamourized images of women in uniform featured in recruitment posters of the period, which aimed to make military service appealing to young women. The strategy was often at odds with the social anxiety that existed about the consequences of the mobilisation of so many women into military service and the civilian workforce. Critics wanted women to enlist for patriotic reasons, rather than for the glamour and independent lifestyle implied by such posters.